shoestring gringa

It wasn’t like we needed another room, but the space just begged for it.  It was originally a small front entry porch, with a bathroom inexplicably off of it.  Well, any bathroom which required leaving the house to enter definitely had to go.  Also, the space looked out over the glorious view.  So, we knocked down the bathroom and enclosed the space, extending it from what is now the dining area just off the kitchen.  The view is visible from all three rooms:  kitchen, dining, and living room, where we spend most of our waking hours.

Building this room from scratch allowed us to put in the kind of windows we like — big, many-paned ones, and a French entry door, facing out respectively onto the view and a small grove of trees in the outer patio.  On the wall opposite the view, another set of windows looks into the small interior patio.  Now there was light.  We covered the floor with local river rock (it was free, a major consideration by that point).

Living room windows

The effect of this room turned out to be quite magical and defines the spirit of the house.  It not only provides a view of the surrounding environment, it creates a sensation of actually being one with it.  Standing in the tree-filtered light, on stones gathered from a nearby riverbed, the boundary between indoors and outdoors is rendered indistinct, almost irrelevant.  The room is made of the stuff of the mountain; the mountain is an ever-changing presence in the room.

Passerby

When planning what changes to make to the house, the first thing we wanted to do was to raise the ceilings.  The place had the poky, claustrophobic 7-foot low ceilings endemic to the area, and we couldn’t wait to get rid of them.  The point advanced by some locals that they make heating easier in winter was lost on us.  We’d both spent our childhood years in old, high-ceilinged houses and have always felt better with some space overhead.

I

low ceiling

The process involved removing the metal roofing, and then the low ceiling material, which was some kind of thin, nasty-looking board.  This, to our surprise, revealed another ceiling higher up (an almost acceptable distance higher up) of carrizo, a local material which resembles bamboo.  It was beautiful — in some of the rooms it was painted a beautifully weathered turquoise — but in bad condition and possibly full of termites, and anyway we were putting on a cement roof which could hold a second story.  The carrizo ceiling was covered with sheets of cardboard, and had 4-6 inches of dirt over it as insulation.  This traditional method of roofing is extremely efficient, by the way — the part of the house we didn’t redo still has the original roofs, and the rooms are cozy in winter and cool in the summer.  And we haven’t had any problems with leaks.

Once all the layers of roofing were gone, we (I use the royal “we” — the construction crew consisted of the Mexigringo, one mason, and one helper) added two to three rows of adobe bricks to the top of the walls to increase the height, and installed a cement roof with styrofoam insulation.

Et voila! — well, five months of back-breaking labor later — 12-foot ceilings!

high ceiling

Remodeling an old house is always an adventure, especially in Mexico as we’ve learned, and some ideas work out better than others.  Now that we’ve lived more than four seasons in the house, it’s possible to judge what we did right and what was not so great.  Hindsight!  In the spirit of counting my blessings, which I’ve been trying to do consciously over these past stressful months,  I thought I’d share some of the things that have worked out well.

First, there was the choice of this particular house, the blank canvas on which we worked.  Being imaginative types, we’ve always been good at projecting our illusions onto any available hook, making choice a somewhat risky business for us.  But here it turns out we did really good.  Let me count the ways:

Condition/price ratio. This was really hard to find in this area, we spent many months searching.  Most properties we saw were both out of our price range and completely uninhabitable.  This place was semi-habitable as it stood, and the price was low enough so we could still afford to fix it up.  We had to clean up the papers, which took several months and a lot of  legwork, but given the lack of other options it was worth it.

Size. It’s big enough — five bedrooms.  Although we occupy very little space in the course of our daily activities, we need a distressing amount of room to accommodate all our crap, which refuses to get any smaller despite repeated weedings-out and ever-increasing attrition.  This seems an intractable fact of our life in that most of said crap consists of paintings and art supplies (two rooms full), until recently the source of our livelihood, and the Mexigringo’s tools (one room full), the source of all other good things.  A fourth bedroom holds real crap, i.e. ice chests, suitcases, camping gear, cat carriers, hoarded empty bottles, leftover construction materials, etc.  The fifth bedroom we sleep in. One of the painting rooms has enough space in the middle to accommodate an air mattress for guests willing to bring their own bed.  The other painting room has enough space in the middle for my tiny sewing machine and an ironing board.

View. We both fell in love with the gorgeous view of the mountains.  This has only grown with time.

View

Site. The place is uniquely situated on a kind of promontory of rock at the end of the street, such that the windows are a good 15 feet above street level.  This allows unobstructed contemplation of the view while preventing passersby from viewing us through the uncurtained windows.

Location. Less important to us, but still of note, the house is a three-minute walk from the town square, and also the last house in town in this direction, overlooking a milpa and the Alameda, a shady country lane leading to the river.

Climate. We enjoy the most pleasant summer weather in the entire region, being at almost 3000 feet elevation.

Trees. Although the outer patio isn’t terribly large, it contains a number of trees which shade the front room windows and provide a kind of natural air conditioning, occasional fruit, and home to singing birds.

Old adobe. We both love old houses, and I have a real thing for adobe construction.  This house has both.  The walls in the older parts of the house are two feet thick, featuring nichos for objets d’art, wide windowsills for the cats to sleep on, and steady interior temperatures (cool in the summer and warm, once heated, in the winter).

Usable existing tile floors. Not what we’d have chosen probably, but not bad either, and they saved us a fortune.

The basic material was solid.  Next time, what we did with it!

A quick tip –  If you have a steam iron, good luck finding distilled water for it in Mexico, unless you live in a big city.  Fortunately, I’ve found that reverse-osmosis purified water seems to work just as well.  My over-20-year-old iron is still doing fine after four years here, with heavier use than it ever got in the states due to not having a dryer and having time to sew again.  Beware of faucet filters that are not RO; they don’t remove the problem-causing minerals.

Just in case you’ve been on the edge of your seat all these months since my distant reference to our upcoming agricultural efforts, herewith a summary of progress:

The lettuce we grew this winter was a huge success.  We were inundated with the stuff (but oh so happily).  We grew Romaine and butter varieties, both from seeds bought here in Mexico at Home Depot.  The Romaine did somewhat better.  We planted it in a couple different spots, and the sunnier spot produced noticeably more and bigger lettuces.  I was amazed at how it grew in such cold weather.  We were really sad when lettuce season ended.

Basil from seed bought several years ago failed to start, but a newer packet started quickly and has flourished since.

Lavender and rosemary seeds from packets both failed to start at all (sniff).  Better luck next year!

Parsley started and three plants provided a continual harvest until about a week ago; I think it’s finally gotten too hot for it.

I was unable to find any tomato seeds to buy (and forget about plants, they don’t seem to exist here, or maybe I just don’t know where to find them), so I squeezed the seeds out of a couple tomatoes from the grocery store and they actually came up.  Since that supremely exciting moment, however, things have gone downhill.  I ended up transplanting five plants, two Roma types and three round.  One plant produced only one tomato and gave up.  The other four have produced quite a lot.  Unfortunately, they refuse to ripen properly.  We’ve been told variously that they have too much sun and too much water.  Probably both.  Also, of course, they’re the offspring of hybrids never meant to reproduce.  We’re probably lucky they didn’t sprout legs and come devour us in our sleep.

Seeds from a grocery store cantaloupe came up and grew into a beautiful plant which flowered but, alas, has produced no fruit at all.

Some friends gave us cucumber seeds last month which we planted directly outside.  They quickly turned into a jungle and are producing like crazy.

I’ve never done any gardening except for growing tomatoes in the Bay Area back in the 80s, which was akin to shooting fish in a barrel — buy plants at store, stick in the ground, water occasionally, harvest perfect tomatoes for 6 months.  O California!

This time around, I’ve referred mostly to Mel Bartholomew’s All New Square Foot Gardening, and Extreme Gardening: How to Grow Organic in the Hostile Deserts by Dave Owens, the Phoenix-based guru for our Sonoran desert climate zone.  We have one 6×4-foot  square-foot type box, built by the Mexigringo, which has held lettuce, tomatoes, parsley, basil, and cucumbers.  We have two tomato plants in kitty litter bins and some flowerpots with basil.  All of these containers are filled with pure compost. The best container by far, however, has turned out to be an old concrete planter about 5 feet in diameter which used to house a tree.   We put about six inches of compost over the top of the existing dirt.  Everything we have grown in there has done noticeably better, I think because the dirt underneath maintains moisture better.  The wooden box with only six inches of compost is hard to keep adequately watered in this climate — things seem to alternately fry and drown.

I found tons of inspiration, courage, and the proper spirit of adventure for this undertaking with Anita Sands Hernandez, the queen of frugal gardening, at her fascinating website here.

Even though much of what we’ve managed to grow could be described more properly as garnishes or herbs than food,  it’s made a huge difference in the quality of our meals.  Parsley, especially, adds a freshness, flavor and color to items like potatoes, rice and sauces which is truly cheering to the vegetable-deprived.

In all, it’s been a great learning experience, and probably the most worthwhile thing I’ve done all year.  Free (almost), fresh food!  Organic, even.  I can’t wait until I can plant more lettuce again.

Shortly after moving to this sleepy village, we adopted the ritual of making every Saturday movie day.  We break out our latest DVD from the 32-peso bin or find something on the internet, pop up some palomitas and have a few cold ones.  At first I made the popcorn in a frying pan, but after a couple months we moved up to an air popper.   One batch from the machine made a nice big bowl for each of us.  All was well until a few months ago when the Mexigringo went off popcorn and started having guacamole instead, leaving me with a big dilemma:  the popcorn machine instructions asserted that the machine required a minimum of a half-cup of popcorn kernels to function.  Totally addicted to popcorn as I now was, this was no laughing matter.

I think I may be the last idiot in the world who reads instruction pamphlets.  I also notice, and often obey, warnings and instructions posted on signs.  For someone who is skeptical to the point of paranoia about everything else I read or hear, this is a curious blind spot indeed.  Maybe it’s my innate mistrust of mechanical things.

Anyway, what to do with all that popcorn?  It was twice as much as I could reasonably eat.  I valiantly tried one time — bad idea.  I guiltily threw away half another day, but that just felt too wicked.  I tried to think of other uses for the extra — string it into curtains or door dividers?  Save it for packing material in case we move?  The specter of attracting rats dampened my enthusiasm for these ideas.

As usual, it was the Mexigringo to the rescue about the fourth Saturday on, as he was making his guacamole while I whined about him leaving me in the popcorn lurch.

MG:  So just make half the amount.

Me:  But the instructions say you have to…..

MG:  Just – TRY – it.

Me:  (snivel, grumble)

Well, guess what folks?  The instruction book lies!  The machine will pop half of the prescribed amount with no problem at all.

You know, it was bad enough getting used to the news being all lies.  But the freaking popcorn instructions?????

It’s summer, and once again the annual Insect Parade is in full swing.  It’s a bit more subdued than last year, probably due to the unusual lack of rains, but still it’s something to see.  There was the rash of scorpions of May to greet the warming weather, followed by a motley succession of life forms which would last from a few days to a week and then disappear as suddenly as they had come, making way for the next wave.  July brought centipedes, who are so fond of dropping unexpectedly from the ceiling.  The last six weeks or so we’ve had small, dark moths which flutter out from our clothes and towels, and which I fervently hope are not the fabric-eating kind.  Some local friends just advised us that a recent arrival, a mid-sized creature with wings, has a nasty bite which, if scratched, oozes a caustic fluid onto the skin.

Notable mostly by their absence this year are the ants, whose movements seem to be related to the rain.  Last year, when it rained every afternoon, the ants would soon follow, marching in great columns across the tile floors, up and down the high walls, to our kitchen.  They were thoughtful in usually arriving after dinnertime, which allowed me to ignore them.

We take a pretty laissez-faire approach to bugs here — after all, we live next to a milpa.   I dislike using poisons around the house, and I  hate killing things.  And anyway they’ve got us way outnumbered.  The bugs mostly go their way and we go ours — peaceful coexistence, you might say.

Well, there are a few exceptions.  I’ve stomped on a scorpion or two, a purely reflex reaction.  Lala the Fearless Killer Tabby is fond of scorpions — for lunch.  I worry she might get bitten but she hasn’t so far.  She also hunts centipedes, as does the Mexigringo.  Spiders suspected of being black widows are eliminated rather heartlessly.  And when the cutter ants show up to ravage the garden, the Mexigringo brings out the big guns, a lethal powder from the hardware store. In August and September, when the flies arrive and somehow get past our screens, we both pursue them with rolled-up newspapers, while the bored tabby looks on.

Lala the Fearless Killer Tabby

But otherwise, it’s live and let live.  The ants are welcome to the kitchen when I’m not using it.  The myriad flying beasties mostly hover around the lights, twelve feet up, although they’ve been so thick lately they will crash land into cooking pots, so I’ve taken to keeping things covered.  We look carefully when reaching into any basket — scorpions adore baskets.  The Mexigringo got stung last summer when going for his keys.  A quick internet search revealed this unlikely to be fatal to an adult and recommended icing.  Now we look first.

The most unwelcome bugs are the ones that get into the food.  O the dismay of finding that disgusting spiderwebby stuff in a box of cornmeal you’ve been hoarding for months!  According to my research (whatever would I do without the internet??), those bugs are there in the meal all along — it’s just that they hatch in warm, humid conditions.  This can supposedly be prevented by freezing the product for a day or two, which kills off the larvae,  so I’ve started doing this with everything in sight — flour, masa harina, chile powder, rice.

Unfortunately I only noticed the rice was harboring uninvited guests weeks after buying a six-pack of 1-lb. bags at one of those big stores.  Freezing doesn’t seem to have fazed the rice critters, or maybe I got there too late.   In any case, it’s a real pain getting them out.  I’ve been picking over the dry rice on a plate, then rinsing it in a strainer, then putting it in a bowl of water, whereupon, encouraged with a little judicious stirring, the little buggers will float towards the top and can be scooped off with a spoon.   Unfortunately the starch in the rice quickly impairs visibility, making frequent changes of water necessary.  It’s kind of distasteful but what else to do?  I’m not going to throw away five bags of rice.  The good news is that here in Mexico, for once in my life I have time:  luxurious, blessed, beautiful time, to de-critter the rice, to observe the ways of the ants, to smell the flowers as they say.  I consider myself supremely fortunate in this.  And if a worm or two evades my search, well hey, it’s free protein.  Or as the old Spanish saying goes, lo que no mata, engorda (what doesn’t kill you, nourishes you).

I’ve never been very good about sticking to schedules, especially with housework, but the last few months I’ve done pretty well at washing the sheets and towels on Fridays.  So I was disappointed to discover the water was off this morning, and as if to put a complete kibosh on my laundry plans, it’s been drizzling.

We’re lucky here at the bottom of the town, because when the water goes out we still usually get a trickle for a while.  So I was able to fill a bucket for the toilet and a pitcher for the kitchen sink before it disappeared completely.

Interruptions in the water supply are fairly frequent in Mexico.  The best solution is to have a Rotoplas, one of those plastic water tanks, on the roof.   In areas where there are chronic water shortages, water tanks are indispensable.  In Progreso, Yucatan, there was never enough water for it to run during the day; everyone’s Rotoplas filled up a drop at a time overnight.   Here, however, it doesn’t happen too often.  Although we made a spot for a Rotoplas when we rebuilt the house, we ran out of money long before the time came to buy one.

The worst thing  about the water cutoffs is being caught unprepared.  I start feeling dirty and sticky and envisioning germs crawling all over everything the minute I know the water’s gone.   And not knowing when it will come back on — will I be able to make dinner (the big event of the day)?  We could go out for tacos of course, but for the thought that they don’t have water either…

Some kind of santizer is good to have around.  I use cheap rum in a spray bottle for hand cleaning during water outages.  We also use it to clean the tops of water bottles before putting them on the dispenser.

One suffocating August morning a couple years ago the water went out early in the morning and showed no signs of coming back as the day dragged on.  We had nothing but the spray bottle of rum and paper towels and became more miserable with each passing hour.  At about 3 p.m. a thunderstorm arrived.  We spent a couple minutes regretting the irony of all that water in the air and none in the faucets, before noticing streams of it pouring off our now-clean truck, and scrambled to get every container we could find under there to collect it, laughing hysterically and getting blissfully soaked in the surprisingly cold downpour.

I was amazed at the amount of water we collected in our small assortment of pots, pans, and buckets.  Enough to flush the toilet and wash for days!  But of course we never got to use most of it — the water came back on about an hour after the storm ended.

A couple kitchens I’ve had in Mexico have not had hot water; it seems to be regarded as something of a luxury here.  It’s a detail you might want to notice when looking for rentals, especially in areas with chilly winters.   We’ve had hot water for a year now, and I find myself using it much more sparingly — in the winter when the tap water is icy, for washing items used with raw meat, and for the occasional extra-greasy pan.

When I didn’t have hot water in the winter, I would heat a pan of water to use for the washing, and only have to suffer through the freezing rinse.  With hindsight, I suppose rubber gloves might have helped some, but it didn’t occur to me at the time.

Here’s a trick I learned from my Yucatecan mother-in-law:  Cold-water washing can leave a bad-tasting (and probably toxic) soap film on dishes; to prevent this, be sure when rinsing to pass your hand over the dish, which apppears to break the film.  I have no idea of the scientific basis of this, but it definitely seems to work.

Should you disinfect vegetables in Mexico as a matter of course?  I must admit I’m not nearly so big on it as I used to be.

When we first moved to tropical Yucatan, I faithfully disinfected anything that was not going to be cooked, i.e. salad stuff.  I used iodine (yodo) until I got a horrified look from the lady in the farmacia when I revealed what I wanted it for, and then moved on to the new silver-based, special purpose Microdyn, which is supposedly nontoxic.  It can also be used to purify drinking water.  I have no idea how effective it is, but it seems to have become very popular and appears to be marketed to restaurants in giant-sized jugs at Sam’s and Costco.

I do think in the tropics disinfecting is probably important.  Nasty bugs of all descriptions flourish in those climes, and they could well be lurking in your vegetables.  Better to be safe.

After moving to Sonora, however, I had an epiphany of sorts while getting ready to disinfect a tomato one night.  This tomato, it occurred to me, was identical in provenance to countless tomatoes we’d consumed in Tucson for years and years, with never a thought of disinfecting them.  Probably 90% of the tomatoes sold in Tucson supermarkets come from Mexico.   Do they somehow lose their Mexican cooties by virtue of crossing the border?  I think not.

I haven’t disinfected a tomato since.

Ironically, I have been disinfecting our homegrown lettuce because it’s grown in compost — just in case.  And I still disinfect supermarket lettuce.  I never disinfect cabbage, though, just remove the outer leaves.  I doubt  millions of taco-vendors do, so why should I?

Another factor to weigh is how trustworthy is the water in which you wash the vegetables.  (The Microdyn bottle makes a big point of the fact that you don’t have to rinse off the Microdyn with possibly bad water after disinfecting.)  As we’ve  had no problems in more than four years brushing our teeth with Mexican tap water, I don’t worry about it.

The truth is, many of the health hazards Mexico is so famous for are really not much of an issue anymore.  The Mexican government has done a bang-up job of getting potable water to the people, including in the most remote and tiny villages (even though many still decline to drink it), and much of the food (sadly) is grown by agribiz.   Common sense, as usual, seems the best approach.